4 posts in this topic

Every recent Hearthstone expansion has had its own series of funny blog posts and videos. Blizzard collaborated with Wronchi in The Boomsday Project and now they are back for Rastakhan's Rumble.

Hearthstone's heroes are waiting in line to get tickets to get into the Gurubashi Arena. Everyone has the gold for it, except from poor (literally) Uther. He does get a card reveal though and the story will be continued from what was teased in the end.

People have been comparing this card to Evasion and Ice Block. It certainly has it pros and cons. You can play it proactively, even at high health and you can combine it perfectly with a weapon swing or powerful healing spells. On the other hand, Time Out! requires more setting-up and better game knowledge of what cards your opponent might have on his/her hand. This card could potentially go into a Control Paladin deck, along with Shirvallah, the Tiger legendary Loa minion.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I think that Ice Block is almost always better, except for the anti secret tech. This because Ice Block always strikes true. Ice Block will always activate when you should die, buying you a turn, anyway your opponent would get lethal damage. Time Out, instead, must be played the turn before your opponent gets lethal, and this can be misplayed.

Yes, if your opponent has on board the damage needed to kill you, playing this card will prevent you from losing. But what about OTK decks? What about Leeroy or Doomguard or Pyroblast? Ice Block work much better in this cases. And you can play Time Out when your opponent doesn't really have the combo ready, wasting it.

For this reasoning, I think Time Out to be worst then Ice Block, and that Time Out can be used in less decks: Time Out can only work in OTK deck that know how many turns they need to win (for example, how many 2/2 token they need to bounce in hand), while Ice Block can also work in Control deck, where you can get damage and then heal and stabilize, and in aggro face deck, when you need some turns more to burn your opponent out.

Recently Browsing
0 members

Similar Content

Ever since the announcement of the Hearthstone Masters system, the details on the final tier - Hearthstone Grandmasters - have been a mystery. However, Tom Matthiesen from Inven Global has released some info on its format, prize pool and invited players.
According to Inven Global, Hearthstone Grandmasters will have a league structure. It will consist of two seasons per year, with each season lasting eight weeks. Each region will have 16 players, who will be divided into two groups of eight. Europe and the Americas seem to be paired together, while it's not defined how Hearthstone Grandmasters will work for other regions.
Inven has even acquired the names of 15 European participants and 13 from the Americas. They are all well-known pro players like Bunnyhoppor, Pavel, Thijs, Kolento, RDU, Firebat, Muzzy, Dog, Purple and more! The last four players will be determined by the results of the upcoming World Championship.
Participants will play twice a week, facing off against each other in a double round-robin system. Hearthstone Grandmasters conclude with global finals. After the two seasons have ended, the two players who performed worst in season 2 in their respective region will be demoted and no longer play in Hearthstone Grandmasters.
As far as the compensation of the players is concerned, each of them will earn $1,000 per week as an appearance fee. For each match won, another $500 is given to the participating players. The prize pool of the global finals is said to be $500,000. It's highly likely there'll be more rewards per seasonal performance.
Hearthstone Grandmasters is set to start soon after the Hearthstone World Championships have concluded. Blizzard is expected to share these details sometime next week.

This is a brand new Constructed Tavern Brawl.
In Battle of the Bans, you pick a class and you initially make a deck of four cards. Your opponent bans one of them and then your deck is filled with copies of the remaining three cards.
The "ban phase" happens after the mulligan but before turn one, and will show 3 of your opponent's cards plus a mystery card. If you pick the mystery card to ban, it will be revealed to you. If you have copies of the card your opponent chose to ban in your hand, they will be replaced randomly by your 3 other cards.
To keep things balanced, the following cards have been banned from Battle of Bans: Jade Idol, Ice Block, Time Out!, Patches the Pirate and Whizbang the Wonderful.
The concept of this Tavern Brawl is very interesting. Not only do you need to pick the proper cards that work well together, you also have to keep into account that one of them will get banned. In turn, you also need to be smart with your ban choice.
This Brawl is very similar to Top 3: one of the decks that is really consistent in both of these Brawls is Mech Hunter with Metaltooth Leaper. Jade Shaman seems to be doing well as you get to summon even larger men every consecutive turn. Discardlock is reportedly performing very solidly, as well. A really strong counter-deck includes Holy Wrath and Shirvallah, the Tiger.
As far as bans are concerned, since this Brawl seems to favour aggro decks in general, make sure to ban any taunts your opponent has. Alternatively, you can try a spell-based Mage or Priest deck.
Feel free to share the decks that worked for you in the comments!

The community card reveals for RIse of Shadows will happen during the next ten days.
The reveal of the... reveal schedule was done a bit differently this time, since there was no official article. Only the dates and the links for the various community sites and streams were posted on the Rise of Shadows official website.

The first reveal stream will happen on Monday March 25 at 10 am PDT.
The final reveal stream, where the entire set is unveiled, should happen during the first week of April. The expansion releases on April 9.

To ensure the integrity of Hearthstone esports, Blizzard has banned the two Taiwanese players who were previously accused of wintrading and stream sniping.
As a reminder, Roger and Reall were caught wintrading on April 2018. Moreover, the Chinese Taipei team, consisting of 2018 World Champion tom60229, Roger, Shaxy and Reall, was caught streamsniping during the Hearthstone Global Games and were consequently disqualified.
Due to these events, there were several protests about Roger being crowned Winter Champion a month ago and qualifying for the this year's World Championship. Blizzard feels that Roger earned his Championship spot legitimately.
However, Roger and Reall will not be allowed to participate in Hearthstone Grandmasters in 2019. The Grandmasters tier is the highest one in the revamped system for Hearthstone esports; it is still not known how exactly Grandmasters is going to work.
Here is the full message regarding Roger and Reall:
u/BlizzMilkfat
Hi all – Sam Braithwaite, Senior Global Franchise Lead for Hearthstone esports here. As we prepare for the 2019 HCT World Championship, I wanted to take the opportunity to address the community’s feedback about one of our professional players, Luo "Roger" Shengyuan, who recently won the HCT Winter Championship.
In Oct. 2018, during the Hearthstone Global Games, we discovered that team Chinese Taipei, which included Roger, tom60229, Shaxy, and Reall had violated the rules to gain a competitive advantage. In response, we administered the penalty outlined in the rules at the time, and disqualified team Chinese Taipei from the competition.
But previously, in April 2018, allegations of Roger and Reall participating in win-trading had surfaced. After an investigation, we discovered their involvement in the incident but did not issue any official warning in response to their rule violation due to an internal miscommunication.
We now realize that our previous rules around these scenarios and our enforcement of them did not meet the standards of our community. We take full responsibility for this. Moving forward, we will be reevaluating our rules for the 2019 season and are committed not only to improving, but also to being more transparent about the way we administer warnings, penalties, and rulings.
Our failure should not diminish Roger’s accomplishments. He earned his championship at HCT Winter and his spot at the upcoming HCT 2019 World Championship on his own merit and in compliance with the official HCT competition ruleset.
While Roger and Reall may still compete in Hearthstone Masters Qualifiers and Masters Tour events, due to having two rule violations last year, they will not be invited to the inaugural year of Hearthstone Grandmasters. Grandmasters will be the highest level of competitive Hearthstone, and its competitors will be held to higher standards, not just in performance, but also in conduct.
Thank you for all your feedback, your support, your patience, and understanding. Hearthstone esports wouldn’t be what it is without you, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts as we prepare to embark on a new chapter of Hearthstone esports in just a few short months.
(source)

What a tournament lined up for Blizzard at World Cyber Games 2019 in Xi'an.
They got Hearthstone up and Warcraft 3 is finally back. Too bad Reforged won't be making it back in time. Hopefully when Warcraft 3: Reforged is out we will be seeing more tournaments with Warcraft competitions.
You can even see the excitement of these games posting the official registrations on their twitter,
for WC3:
Hearthstone: https://twitter.com/HSesports/status/1105247640646754304
Who knows maybe even one day we will get some Diablo tournaments if that is possible. Blizzard can host their own event as well with so many of their games having a great esports scene already.